Privilege notice against Rahul Gandhi: How BJP seeks to corner Congress chief over 'Jaitlie' tweet

Congress president Rahul Gandhi may find himself in trouble ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections if Lok Sabha's Privileges Committee censures him.

Kumar Shakti Shekhar
Kumar Shakti Shekhar
New Delhi, January 9, 2018 | UPDATED 17:55 IST

Highlights

  • 1
    BJP MP Bhupender Yadav moves privilege notice against Rahul.
  • 2
    Venkaiah Naidu forwards notice to Lok Sabha speaker.
  • 3
    BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi heads Lok Sabha's Privileges Committee.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi is already embroiled in two court cases. He may get entangled in the third one.

However, this time it will not be in court but in Parliament.

The Congress president is facing litigation in the National Herald financial irregularities case and for blaming the RSS for Mahatma Gandhi's assassination.

His sarcastic tweet spelling Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's surname as "Jaitlie" is likely to generate more heat in the days and months to come.

Taking strong exception to the tweet, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Bhupender Yadav moved a privilege notice against Rahul Gandhi in the house.

But the subsequent developments indicate that the matter will escalate in a major bone of contention between the ruling BJP and the Congress not just inside Parliament but also outside it.

Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu could have rejected Yadav's privilege notice or sat over it. Instead, he has forwarded it to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Naidu not only forwarded the notice to his counterpart in the Lower House but also gave the opinion that the issue did involve prima facie a question of privilege of Jaitley, who also is the Leader of the Rajya Sabha.

With Naidu having forwarded the notice along with his opinion, the Lok Sabha speaker is likely to take action on it.

In all probability, she will forward it to the Privileges Committee of the Lok Sabha. The 15-member panel is headed by BJP MP from New Delhi Meenakashi Lekhi who is also the party's national spokesperson.

In order to score a point over the Congress, the committee may recommend censure or reprimand of the party president. This may be embarrassing for Rahul and the Congress.

IN RAHUL'S DEFENCE

The Congress has taken the privilege notice against their leader with utmost seriousness. Speaking to India Today, party spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi termed it an "extremely unfortunate development". She accused the government of digressing and using Parliament for scoring personal point instead of focusing on issues of national importance.

"The nation faces economic crisis, job crisis, security challenges and social unrest but it gets a government which is focussed on an ego battle. Not to forget this is the very same party when in opposition screamed slogans calling the then PM a "chor" (thief)," she said.

Chaturvedi reminded that Modi, in one of his tweets, had addressed Manmohan Singh as "Maunmohan". "It is a shame that they have reduced Parliament to issues which are hardly relevant in the national discourse," she added.

Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan too disagreed with the privilege notice against Rahul. He refused to even accept that the Congress president's tweet was defamatory or a breach of privilege.

"The tweet is not even defamatory. In fact, the notice is an abuse of Rules of Privileges. It may be a borderline case of defamation. But then defamation is not breach of privilege," Bhushan said.

PANNING OUT

At one point in time, it seemed that the matter stood resolved. It was after Jaitley and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad made statements in the house during the recently-concluded winter session of Parliament over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's controversial remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh and former vice-president Hamid Ansari.

Modi, in the run up to the December 2017 Gujarat Assembly election, had accused Singh, Ansari and diplomats of conspiring with Pakistan for the state poll.

The Congress vociferously protested the PM's remarks and disrupted Parliament's proceedings for several days demanding his apology.

The treasury benches and the principal opposition party reached an understanding to allow the Upper House to function. On December 27, both Jaitley and Azad made statements in the house to signal rapprochement and resumption of business.

However, Rahul Gandhi posted the controversial tweet the same evening attacking not just Jaitley but also Modi and the ruling BJP.

The privilege notice, along with the two court cases, is likely to play out on the national scene and lead to more muck-raking ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.